


it's a big, scary world

by SamExists



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Pepper and Morgan are also mentioned but they're not actually in it so, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 05:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18866647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamExists/pseuds/SamExists
Summary: How does Tony Stark learn to deal with always being terrified about losing his kids in a world and universe that is so much bigger than anyone ever knew? Well, as a start, he talks to May Parker.





	it's a big, scary world

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this literally a year ago, right after I saw Infinity War, but I had a really hard time finishing it. So, after I saw Endgame, I managed to pick it back up, alter it a bit to fit some parts of Endgame (obviously not all, Tony Stark is not dead in this fic, but some), and so here it is!

_Behind him, Peter says haltingly “Mr. Stark? I don’t feel so good.”_

 

_Tony turns to face Peter as fast as he can. “You’re alright,” he replies. The kid has to be alright. He has to be._

 

_Peter looks terrified as he stumbles towards Tony, eyes wide and full of panic. “I don’t… I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know, save me, save me,” he gasps. Tony catches him before he falls to the ground, the boy clinging to him tightly, fingers scrabbling at Tony’s back. Peter continues to speak, desperation evident in his tone, “I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go, Mr. Stark, please. Please, I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna go.” His legs give out, and Tony gently lowers him to the ground. He can feel Peter drifting away, literally turning to ash in Tony’s arms, but he doesn’t let go. He won’t let go. Peter whispers, “I’m sorry,” and with nothing more than the sound of a soft wind blowing him away, the kid is gone. Grief, panic and shock rise in Tony’s chest, and he brings his hands to his lips. They are covered in ash._

 

        Tony wakes up gasping, shaking, and alone. For a moment he is still on Titan, ash and dust covering his skin and filling his throat, thick, cloying, choking. His breath comes in shallow gasps, raw, desperate sobs wracking his body as his heart stammers in his chest, thumping wildly. Distantly, he hears a faint voice with a robotic tone, but it takes a minute to break through his haze enough for him to fully register what he is hearing. It’s FRIDAY. “Sir, you are currently exhibiting many symptoms commonly associated with severe panic attacks. You need to slow your breathing and heart rate. Please follow along with me. Breathe in, 2… 3… 4, breathe out… 2… 3… 4.” FRIDAY… He lost connection with FRIDAY almost as soon as he boarded the spaceship. How…? His confusion creates a path through the fog of his panic, and suddenly he is aware of his surroundings once again. He is at home, in bed.

 

        Tony breathes as deeply as he can, trying to slow his racing heartbeat. However, as the room comes back into focus and he starts to come down from his state of heightened anxiety, he remembers the content of his nightmare. His breathing begins to accelerate once more, but somehow he manages to stop himself from going back over the edge into another panic attack. He reminds himself that Peter is okay; they brought him and the others back months ago. It’s been rough, everyone reintegrating into a world that looks very different than they left it, but things are… okay. He doesn’t have to worry about Peter. He’ll probably even talk to the kid tomorrow, and he will definitely see him on the weekend when they’ll both be at the re-built Avengers compound.

 

        Everything’s fine.

 

        Even though it is only about 2:00 am, Tony doesn’t even try to go back to sleep. He knows he won’t be able to, not after that nightmare, and his sleep schedule has been so screwed up for so long that it doesn’t matter much to him anyway. He gets up and heads down to his workshop, but as he’s walking down the hall doubt starts to creep back into his mind. What if Peter isn’t okay? Logically, Tony knows that the kid is fine, but something in his brain won’t abandon the thought. What if he’s somehow wrong about everything? What if it’s still a post-snap world, half the population gone, living day-to-day and trying to move forward but always a little stuck in the past? Time travel… how could he possibly have travelled through time and (barely) survived wielding the goddamn infinity stones? Or if he’s right, what if Peter got himself injured or… or even _killed_ since the last time they spoke? Tony shakes his head, trying to pull himself out of that particular thought spiral. Peter is fine. He will call him in a few hours, when he knows Peter will be on his way to school (and when he can plausibly be calling for some other reason).

 

        Tony walks into his workshop, yawning, because even though his brain is wide awake his body is heavy and fatigued. He sits down and picks up his current project anyway and begins to fiddle with it, fussing with little things that don’t need to be changed, trying to distract himself. His efforts turn out to be unsuccessful, because when an hour has passed Tony has done more to hurt his project than help it, and he has worried himself to the brink of another panic attack. The reasonable part of him knows, he _knows_ , that Peter is totally fine, that the kid’s asleep in his room in Queens, but he just can’t convince himself fully that this is true. He makes a frustrated noise, throws the ruined piece of machinery against the wall in front of him, and puts his head in his hands.

 

        If Pepper were there, she could calm him down. She might even manage to convince him to go back to bed, but Pepper is halfway across the world on a business trip, so Tony has no one but himself to talk himself out of his spiral. He’s never been particularly good at that.

 

        She took Morgan with her, too, so he can’t go watch his daughter sleep to calm him down (she’s still such a miracle, he’ll never stop being amazed by her). He sighs, briefly calmed down by thinking of his family, but then a fresh spike of panic rushes through him. What if something happened to Pepper and Morgan? He talked to them about 8 hours ago, but… that’s plenty of time for something to go wrong. Anything could have happened, they could be gone, and he would have been here, asleep. Not helping. He groans frustratedly, exclaiming “This is irrational! They’re _fine_. I’ll talk to them all in the morning. _Everything is fine_.” He is slightly reassured, but his anxiety lingers at the back of his mind, what ifs rattling around inside his skull. Standing and beginning to pace, he resigns himself to hours spent going in circles in his mind, calming himself down only to fall right back into the anxious mess, when he has an idea.

 

        He can fly over to Peter and May’s apartment, just to check on Peter. Tony won’t even have to go in, he can just look through the window, see that Peter is there, alive, and okay, then leave. Granted, it’s not the best idea. It’s weird… but it will probably reassure him... There’s nothing he can do to assure Pepper and Morgan’s safety until morning, but Queens isn’t far if he uses his suit (or even if he just drove fast, honestly), and if he sees Peter, at least, it might help. Before he can talk himself out of it, Tony stands up, summoning the suit as he goes.

 

        He soon finds himself just around the corner from Peter and May’s apartment. He pauses for a moment, hovering, awkwardness tinted with embarrassment welling in his chest, overtaking the anxiety. “What am I doing?” Tony mutters aloud to himself. He’s ready to turn around and go back when something in his brain stops him. What if he’s wrong, and Peter isn’t all right? What if…? He is once again overcome with a need to be absolutely certain that the boy is alright, so he continues, stopping once again to hover right outside Peter’s window.

 

        Tony looks inside and sees Peter lying in his bed, sound asleep, chest moving steadily as he breathes. He exhales heavily, the tension he hadn’t even noticed leaving his body as he is flooded with relief. Peter’s okay. He’s okay. The kid’s face is even more innocent-looking while asleep, and Tony is overwhelmed by how young he really is. This kid is _so young_ , way too young to have experienced everything that he has already experienced, and Tony feels unbearably guilty about it all. It’s all his fault, all of it, Peter wouldn’t have gotten into any of it without him. He wants nothing more than to protect the boy, but it’s so hard. He doesn’t know how.

 

        Peter shifts in his sleep, pulling Tony out of his thoughts for a moment. He looks at the kid with extraordinary fondness (that he might never admit to in daylight), but also so much fear. He is about to turn away, head back home to get through the rest of the mostly-sleepless night, when the door to Peter’s room opens, dim light from the hallway spilling in. Peter’s Aunt May stands in the doorway. She is presumably also checking on Peter, possibly woken from her own sleep by thoughts or dreams similar to Tony’s own. For a moment she doesn’t notice Tony, but he is frozen in place, unable to leave before she spots him.

 

        When May does notice him, she jumps, not seeming to recognize him at first. When she does, her face twists in confusion for a few seconds, then her expression clears. Tony thinks that she must know, she is incredibly perceptive after all. She gestures towards him, in a way that he is sure means that she wants him to come inside. Tony desperately doesn’t want to go in, doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to face the guilt and shame and awkwardness associated with this night. However, this is May Parker. She is not one to pretend something like this never happened, no matter how much Tony wishes he had stayed in bed, drowning in panic or not. So he turns away from the window and heads down to go in through the main entrance, not wanting to be any faster than he has to be.

 

        Tony is standing outside the apartment door, suit returned to its storage compartment, no more than five minutes later. He knocks lightly on the door, and May opens it almost immediately. “Come in, Tony,” she smiles at him, somewhat sadly. There is compassion and something akin to pity in her eyes, which makes the urge to run from this conversation, to go back in time and never leave his bed even stronger. However, he’s here now, so he lets May steer him towards the couch, where they both sit down.

 

        “Couldn’t sleep?’ May asks, with forced lightness. Tony nods, voice failing him, hands shaking with anxiety. “Me neither,” she continues, “I thought I moved on from the phase where I woke up in the middle of the night to check on Peter years ago, but… well, losing him brought it back, I suppose.” She glances at him, expecting an answer, but not impatiently.

 

        There are many thoughts going through Tony’s brain, possible deflections and questions and feelings that bubble up in his throat without permission, so without thinking he abruptly asks, “How do you make it go away? I… he was gone for so long, and Morgan… she’s so small, I’ve never been able to stop checking on her constantly, even when I thought it was over and it couldn’t possibly get any worse. How do you stop worrying that they’re going to disappear while you’re busy, or asleep?”

 

        “When Peter was a little kid, just after his parents died, I used to wake up every hour, terrified that he would have suffocated in his sheets or something, and rush into his bedroom to find him sleeping. I barely got any sleep, but it did eventually get better. Now, though, I’m terrified all the time again, every minute he is out of my sight. I’m always waiting for a phone call, or a news alert, or for everyone to start turning to dust again, and I don’t know if it’s ever going to go away.”

 

        “I’m always waiting for everything to go wrong again. The stones are… gone, more or less, but there’s a whole universe of dangers out there, and I can’t stop thinking that if I stop looking over my shoulder for a moment they’ll all be gone again, and it’ll be my fault. All I’ve wanted for so long is to help people, leave the world better than I found it, and I _did_ it, and it nearly killed me, but I still can’t stop worrying! Because it’s so much bigger than me now, it has been for a long time, and I can’t… I can’t keep the world safe for them. I can’t do anything, I just have to let them live their lives and… and hope they... make it.” Tony trails off, embarrassed by his monologue, but May just looks at him with a kind expression on her face.

 

        “Welcome to being a parent,” she says, and smiles. “I never thought I’d be one, but... Peter’s my kid, really. I mean, most of us aren’t retired superheroes, but we all worry. You’re right, the world, or universe, is so big and they’re so small and there’s not nearly enough we can do to help them. But… somehow, we get through it, the worry, and live our lives. And the kid is worth every minute of it.” “Yeah, they are.” Tony agrees, thinking of the very first time he saw his daughter, the moment he reunited with Peter after five years, and when he nearly lost them both forever.

 

        “Peter’s not even my kid, he doesn’t need me, you’re clearly much more well-adjusted to parenthood than I am,” Tony laughs somewhat bitterly, “Thank god Morgan has Pepper, I’m a wreck!”

 

        May says, “Peter does need you. He needs a mentor for the whole superhero thing, and he needs a good father figure. He needs me too, and I like to think that he always will, but it’s good for him to have another positive adult influence in his life, you know. He needs people, plural, Tony. Everyone does.” She pauses, seeming to contemplate her next words, but continues. “And you’re an amazing father to Morgan. Everyone who has ever seen you with her can see that. You need to give yourself a break. You have given so much to the world and the people around you, you deserve it more than anyone, probably. Again, I don’t really know what being a retired superhero is like, and I’m sure it’s impossible not to worry, but you deserve some peace, Tony.”

 

        Her kindness is overwhelming, but somehow… it doesn’t make him feel worse. He feels quite a lot better than he did before coming here, despite a tinge of lingering awkwardness. He stands to leave anyway though, as it is approaching sunrise by now and it is not a good idea to be flying over New York in daylight. “Thank you.” Tony says, his tone more sincere than he would let it be in most other situations, “And I’m sorry for showing up here so late.”

 

        “It’s alright. It’s not like I was sleeping.” May grins, and Tony smiles back, albeit a bit weakly. “Next time I need to talk about how terrifying parenting is, I’ll give you a call. Or better yet, show up at your doorstep.”

 

        “I look forward to it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, a few things. First, I actually do like the end of Endgame, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt and that I'm not going to write fics in which Tony Stark is still alive. I also had this idea ages ago, and I really liked it so I wanted to finish it, even though it took me soooo long. 
> 
> That's the second thing, it was really hard to write because I am not a parent, so the conversation with Tony and May was really hard to conceptualize. It's actually inspired a lot by the scene in Grey's Anatomy (I think it's season 6) where Bailey talks to Callie about how being a parent is always scary. I love the idea of Tony and May being kind of co-parents for Peter, so I'm pretty proud of this idea, and I think I executed it reasonably well. And May is 100% Peter's parent, I don't make the rules, sorry!
> 
> Finally, as I said, I have written this as an AU in which Tony Stark is alive, but... you could also interpret it as Tony being a ghost and not knowing it. That could be why Pepper and Morgan aren't there, Tony is maybe in the tower in New York instead of his cabin (since the assumption here is that it's not far from New York but I have no idea where it actually is), would contribute to May being shocked about seeing him at the window and then being so chill about the whole thing (since she's totally the type to roll with it and try to help him anyway)... just a thought. I think I might do something with this idea as well, if I get around to it.
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this. Please comment and let me know what you think.


End file.
